


A Very Human Pursuit

by Frangipanidownunder



Category: The X-Files
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-06-09
Updated: 2017-06-09
Packaged: 2018-11-12 06:02:53
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 593
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11155761
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Frangipanidownunder/pseuds/Frangipanidownunder
Summary: Written for @leiascully XFWritingChallenge: Persistence. This started off light and took a dramatic turn towards angst city. Sorry.





	A Very Human Pursuit

Her tongue was planted between her teeth, her brow sheen with sweat. She was the picture of concentration. It was doing things to him. She was rocking her hips, rolling her shoulders, tilting her head from side to side to stretch her neck. She grasped and released. Grasped and released. And when she released she sighed. It was definitely doing things to him. He folded his arms tighter around his midriff, as though squeezing would keep his heart from exploding.  
Great art is, by nature, subjective. But Dana Scully holding a baseball bat was great art. Perhaps the greatest portrait he’d ever seen.  
“Come on, Mulder. Pitch!”  
He chuckled and bent forward to collect a ball. “Ready?”  
“Always,” she said, hoicking the bat to her shoulder.  
He let fly with a solid delivery. She swung. She missed. She shook her head.  
His second was slower. She swung. She missed. She cursed.  
“Last chance, Scully.”  
“Let it rip, Mulder. Don’t hold back.” She grasped and released, grasped and released. And exhaled.  
He shook himself, tucked his body over, flexed his hands around the ball, wound himself up and watched as the ball accelerated from his grip towards Scully’s bat.  
Everything slowed. He would remember the way the sun caught around her hair like a halo. He would remember the smell of fried onions from the hotdog stand on the corner. He would remember the way a single cloud drifted across the sky in the shape of a flying saucer. He would remember thinking how spooky that was. He would remember the border collie leaping high in the distance to catch a Frisbee. He would remember the squeal of the toddlers chasing each other in circles. He would remember the thwack of stick slapping horsehide. He would remember her unbridled hollering, her victory cry, her celebratory fist pump. He would remember hearing the ball whizz over his head and the clunk of his neck as he twisted to follow its trajectory. He would remember seeing it land a distance away and not caring about anything else in the world at that moment save for her running around the makeshift diamond and claiming the win. The perfect moment framed in his memory.  
He would retain this scene and cling tight to it when it got too much, when the torture would begin, when the world would turn to black or especially when it wouldn’t and the bright white pain would burst inside him, wicking out through every pore.  
He would remember her persistence that day. She was so determined to hit that ball. He had never seen her so animated about something so mundane. And she did it for him. She told him she wanted to be able to have a game with him, that their ‘date’ had sparked something in her.  
He would revisit that scene when he was returned and lay on the hospital bed, when he saw her swollen tummy and understood what he had returned to. He revisited it to ground himself. Scully swinging a baseball bat. A simple act. A very human pursuit.  
He would recall her face, that tongue between her lips, that sheen of sweat, he would bring it to the forefront of his mind when he was reaching the pit of despair. She had left him. A simple act. A very human pursuit.  
And if he persisted, as she had those years before, then perhaps he could find a way back to how he was before, how they were before. The pursuit of happiness. A very human pursuit.


End file.
